Seriously, as a European it never ceases to amaze (and confound) me how much a nation which purportedly has STRICT SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE lets religious matters dictate their lives.

Like the recent thing with Obama and McCain getting interviewed about their "Christian values" or whatever? Not gonna happen here, EVAH. Simple as that, because here, faith (or lack thereof) is private, not something you parade around to gain brownie points. We have a lot of politicians who are devoutly religious (some of them even used to be ordained pastors), but that does neither influence the way they do their jobs, nor the electorate at the polls.

Which is the way it should be, IMO. We've had people from the Green Party leave government *gasp!* when the more realistic folks in the party decided that it was better to compromise on some issues in order to make at least a FEW steps towards a better environment rather than cling to their principles at all cost; that, to me, is really taking the moral high ground.

A Catholic family friend, back when Pope Paul VI (the guy who first issued an encyclica about birth control) was still in office, STILL got the Pill from her (also devoutly Catholic) OB/GYN because he told her he couldn't in good conscience, for medical reasons, let her go through a fourth pregnancy. He explained that he agreed in principle with the Church's stand on the issue, but that he feared she'd die if she had yet another child -- and that she had to consider that her family needed her as wife and mother more than one more baby.